


Grand Gestures

by manic_intent



Category: Deadpool (Movieverse)
Genre: Full Spoilers for Deadpool 2, M/M, Prompt Fic, That Postcanon story where Wade fixes the time travel thingy, and gives it back to Nate as a grand gesture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 18:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15321441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: “I had this dream where Yukio and Goth Girlfriend fixed your time travel thingy and I used it to fix all the fuckups in my life,” Wade said brightly, “so I woke up and called Yukio, but she said they can’t fix something like that.Butshe knew someone who could, so I now owe a lot of people a lot of favours. Here.”Nate caught the Time Travel Thingy that Wade slung towards him. “What,” he said, blinking.





	Grand Gestures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brodinsons (aeon_entwined)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeon_entwined/gifts).



> Cablepool prompt from brodinsons: Wade giving a fixed Greymalkin (time travel device) to Nate and Nate using it to save him

“I had this dream where Yukio and Goth Girlfriend fixed your time travel thingy and I used it to fix all the fuckups in my life,” Wade said brightly, “so I woke up and called Yukio, but she said they can’t fix something like that. _But_ she knew someone who could, so I now owe a lot of people a lot of favours. Here.” 

Nate caught the Time Travel Thingy that Wade slung towards him. “What,” he said, blinking. 

“TLDR? It’s fixed. You’re welcome.” As Nate just kept staring at him, Wade blew out a long sigh. “You can go home now. Need that spelled out in skywriting? Interpretive dance? Pancakes?” 

“Ah. Thanks,” Nate said. He strapped the Thingy back to his wrist and went back to reading the New York Times on his laptop.

What. 

Wade sidled over, frowning. Nate lived with Wade and Al because he was technically undocumented and sporting a weird-ass arm that he couldn’t keep blaming on comic cons. The apartment felt a lot smaller with a third person, but Nate was pretty quiet and was fine sleeping on the couch. He got along with Al and kept the apartment spotless. He _also_ spent all his free time reading stuff off the internet. 

“Naaate,” Wade said, angling his masked head over the laptop. “It’s not a joke. I really did get it fixed. Colossus knew a guy who knew a guy.”

“I can see that it’s fixed,” Nate said, distracted by whatever he was reading. He frowned as Wade closed his laptop. “What?” 

“Aren’t you going home? Wife and kid? Remember?” Saying that ached a little somehow. Not that losing friends was new to Wade. Or whatever Nate was. Friend-adjacent. 

“Yes?” Nate stared at him. “That’s the thing about time travel, Wade. There’s no rush. I told you earlier. I think there’s more that I can do here. Maybe nudge things towards a better path.” 

“Like a butterfly?”

“What butterfly?”

Wade wrinkled his nose. He’d never been particularly sure about this point of logic either. “There’s a story about a butterfly and a dino and then time changes forever in a weird way. That’s the problem with time travel. No? It’s such a popular yet extremely misused plot device. Especially since a franchise like Marvel can’t be bothered to set any actual rules. Narrative convenience is trapping you in the present, that’s what.” 

“It’s a nice gesture,” Nate said, patting the Thingy. “Probably the nicest thing anyone’s done for me.”

“We’re even, is what.” Wade didn’t like debts. Or he didn’t like debts when it came to Nate. The uneven serrated feeling in his chest that he’d tried to cover up with jokes and a hug when he’d realized Nate had blown his last chance to go home hadn’t eased. Still gnawed at him even after he’d offered Nate the couch. Still bugged him even now, with Nate literally wearing his ticket home. 

“More than even. Thanks.” 

“So go,” Wade said, circling the coffee table to plop himself down on the couch. “Or what, you’re waiting for Al to come back from the park to say goodbye?”

“I’m not going anywhere yet.”

“Okay.” Wade waited. When Nate merely opened up his laptop again, Wade said, “I don’t get it.” He’d been steeling himself to say goodbye, weird as that was. Played out a few scenarios on his way home. Nate would zap off immediately. Or wait for Al to get back then say his polite goodbyes. Zap off after that. Have a last burrito and zap off. Go check on the X-Men and creepily creep on his future parents then zap off. _Something_. 

“I mean what I said.” Nate looked surprised at Wade’s confusion. “Not done with this timeline yet. Or with you.” He smiled one of his strange sharky smiles. 

Not. Creepy at all. Wade scowled and slunk off to Sister Margaret’s, leaving Al to the shark. “It’s not that I was expecting a huge ‘thank you’ or anything,” he complained to Dopinder, “it’s just that I was fucking expecting to maybe have to revamp the X-Force sequel without Cable. Which would be a bit of a downer, but it’s not like there aren’t a gazillion other mutants out there.” 

“It’s nice that Mister Cable decided to stay,” Dopinder said, as he wiped down the bar counter. 

“Is it though?” Wade nudged up his mask and sipped a beer. 

“Aren’t you two friends?”

“Logically you’d think so, given our shared history and all that in the comic books, but if you look real close at said shared history he’s actually a huge dick.” Literally, at that. Nate didn’t have any real concept of privacy for some reason, and Wade had once copped an eyeful walking past the bathroom. “Not a big surprise to be honest. Whenever a white guy decides to unilaterally change the world the plan usually shits itself to Saturday.”

Dopinder wrinkled his nose. He scuttled quickly away to another table at a gesture, taking an order from some biker guys and walking back to the counter to pour out whiskeys. “So you’re not friends?” Dopinder asked, in between ferrying whiskeys to tables.

“No? Don’t know?” Did grand gestures automatically make people a friend?

“It was nice of you to fix his machine thing,” Dopinder said, returning to the bar. 

“Yeah, well. Now I don’t know why I bothered.” 

“It doesn’t matter, Mister Pool.” Dopinder topped up his beer. “What matters is that you did it. And it was a nice thing to do. Even if he doesn’t use it. Because it’s the thought that counts.”

“I always hated that phrase,” Wade said sourly. “Of course the thought fucking counted—”

“Mens Rea,” said one of the biker guys who’d gotten a whiskey.

Wade turned to frown at him. “What?”

“Criminal law thing,” said the biker guy. Jamie, that was his name. Devil Cross gang. They ran gigs out west of New Jersey. “Lawyer explained it to me once while we were kidnapping him. When you do a crime you got to have the act and the intent. That’s mens rea.”

Wade considered this over his beer. “Kinda sounds like an STD.” He’d never been a huge fan of latin. “And this conversation is now getting way too topical. No more lines for you anymore, Jamie. Where was I? That’s right. Thoughts counting. Yeah, it counts. I fucking owe some dangerous people favours right now is how it counts.” 

“You could get Mister Cable to share the favour,” Dopinder suggested. 

“Nah.” Wade kept his own promises. “Let’s just leave this a lesson to me.” His phone buzzed him. Peeking at the screen, Wade scowled. One of said favours was already getting called in. “Welp, and that’s me having to catch a plane to Venezuela. See you when I see you, Dopinder.” 

“Can I come along?” Dopinder asked hopefully. 

“Nope. No. Now that Weasel is conveniently no longer in the picture, you’re stuck running this plot device.” Wade gestured vaguely at the bar and escaped. He wasn’t much of a babysitter anyway.

#

“Oh shit,” Wade said, as he woke up in what he now thought of as the Waiting Room. One step before Heaven. Or a halfway house. Or a fever dream. The sun-drenched room was looked even more off-definition today. The outlines of the couch were fuzzy. Ness was leaning a hip against the couch, her arms folded.

“Really, Wade,” she said. She smiled, with a fond sort of exasperation. 

“Is this like my comic book thing where I fall in love with Death for whatever hell reason and keep meeting her in ridiculous ways?” Wade walked cautiously over. When he didn’t run face first into any invisible walls, he grinned and went in for a hug—only to walk right through Ness. “Ness?” 

“I’m trying to move on, Wade,” Ness said softly. “That’s what I meant before. It’s not your time. It was mine.” 

“Ness, baby. Just a little more. And I’m here, aren’t I? Sweetheart, I’m here.” 

“I know it hurts less nowadays that I’m not there.” Ness ran her fingertips gently over Wade’s face. “And that’s okay. I’m glad. I don’t want you to keep trying to follow me. I want you to move on. Be happy.” 

_I can’t_ , Wade said, but he’d never been good at lying to Ness. He had been moving on. It just had hurt a hell of a lot at first. Without Russell, Yukio, and Colossus… hell, without Al and even fricking Nate—he probably wouldn’t have made it. “I had help,” Wade said softly. 

“I know. And that’s good. I’m glad that you do. Russell’s a nice kid. So’s Yukio. Even Ellie.” 

“Ellie?” Wade pretended to be confused, and Ness rolled her eyes. 

“Take care of those kids, OK?” Ness came in for a hug, and this time Wade could feel some resistance where her skin was meant to be, where her cheek pressed against his shoulder. She pulled away. “I’m going to go now. And I want you to be okay with that. Maybe not right now. But someday.”

“Someday,” Wade promised. 

“Hey. And. Give Nate a chance, yeah?” Ness grinned. Wade stared at her, confused, about to ask her for an explanation, then he yelped as he was punched away from the Waiting Room, into the dark.

#

Wade woke up choking on dust. Kneeling next to him, Nate studied him with weary satisfaction and looked back over the road at the pile of atomised rubble. Shit. “Was a fucking ambush,” Wade croaked.

“And you’re a fucking idiot,” Nate said. His infected arm looked charred. And the Thingy… Wade yelped and grabbed Nate’s wrist. The Thingy was a fused and lightly smoking mess. 

“The hell happened to that?”

“Looks like it wasn’t as fixed as you thought,” Nate said, glancing down. “Good try though, whoever did it. Trying to extrapolate Greymalkin’s tech from reverse-engineering. Fact that it worked at all was a miracle.” 

“Shit.” Wade bounced his head down onto the asphalt. “Why’d you do that?” He glowered up at Nate. “We’ve already been through this plot device. I even got a ten-minute death speech out of it.” No death speech this time around. Bummer. 

Nate scrubbed a hand slowly over his face. “I really did appreciate what you did for me,” he said carefully. “But the thing is. I also really do want to stay. And if you’ve seen what happens to the world in the future, you’d have wanted to stay too. Beyond that. I remember my debts. And I like you.” 

“Well you fucking should,” Wade muttered, “given you’re leeching off me and I tried to do you a fucking big favour, fuck grand gestures—” He stiffened up as Nate sighed and leaned in and pressed a peck on his cheek. At Wade’s astonished stare, Nate tipped up Wade’s mask with slow, telegraphed moves. Then he kissed Wade on the mouth when Wade didn’t budge. There was even tongue, when Wade sucked in a thin breath of shock and opened his mouth.

Wow.

And hell, what d’you know. Sharky guys with dud eyes from the future could _kiss_. 

“Now I get it,” Wade said, squinting up at Nate. 

Nate snorted. “About fucking time. Good. I thought I’d have to write it on your dick with permanent markers, the way things were working out.” 

“There’s a thought,” Wade said, and let Nate help him to his feet. As he dusted himself off, Wade snuck peeks at Nate. For someone who had pretty much just made a grand gesture himself by napalming his ticket home, Nate looked weirdly at peace with it. And that was… nice? People making grand gestures _for_ Wade was new. 

_Give Nate a chance_ , Ness had said. Huh. Well. She’d always known Wade better than he knew himself. No harm giving it a shot. “Maybe we should go into business together,” Wade said, gesturing at the rubble. “You could be the muscle and I could be the guy collecting the money.” 

Nate chuckled. “Maybe something like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent.tumblr.com 
> 
> And that's the last of my holiday prompts! :3


End file.
